Alice opened the door to her room carefully and whispered. She had already brushed her teeth and otherwise gotten ready for bed. She didn’t want to have to leave this room until answers were had.

“Hello? Are you still in here Jessica?”

There was some rustling, and then the squirrel Jessica came out from under the bed.

“I brought some food? I wasn’t sure what you could eat…”

Jessica’s black eyes met her own, and Alice felt the bridge between their minds form again.

‘Thank god, I’m starving! I totally forgot about it given everything that happened. Did it go well with your father?’

Alice opened the tupperware container and put it on the floor and Jessica rushed up to it quickly and stuck her face inside, shoving food in her cheeks until they were bulging full. Jessica looked up at Alice then seemed to freeze. She took a moment to chew and swallow before eating slower. A faint sense of embarrassment wafted over the connection from her.

‘Er, sorry. Squirrel instinct you know. Hard to resist stuffing it all down at once.’

Alice just nodded and shut the door before laying out on her bed, mind still racing from her conversation with her dad. The revelations about her mom.

‘You okay? I wouldn’t even be standing under the mountains of pressure you’re under right now. Infiltrator of Authority really is a piece of work, I’ll tell you that much…’

Alice lifted her head and saw Jessica perched on the wooden bar at the end of the bed staring at her. She tried to whisper softly so her dad wouldn’t hear.

“It’s a lot. It feels like years since this morning. I just feel so drained from everything that’s happened.”

‘You know, we don’t have to do this now. We can talk tomorrow after some rest. My plan isn’t that complicated. Not a lot of prep for you.’

“No, just lay it on me. What are you and what do you want?”

‘Well, I used to be a squirrel until I was drawn into another world through a red portal and modified by a Spawn to make me able to do all sorts of things. But it was interrupted, so I was left unfinished.’

Alice felt a wave of exhaustion wash over her. Seriously? Oh god, and there was more.

‘In this other world I became friends with the human woman Jessica. When she… Died, I transferred her memories into me, creating a fusion of the two of us. During the events of Harmony me and my friend escaped to the outside. But the government captured my friend and have had it for the last year. I need your help freeing it. There’s only so much I can do as a squirrel.’

“And this thing, is it like you? Some kind of animal?”

The squirrel shifted from foot to foot and its head turned away slightly.

‘Not exactly… It’s a Spawn. But!’

Alice struggled to keep her voice to a whisper to a hiss. “No way! I’m not freeing another one of those monsters into the world. It’ll just go and hurt more people.”

‘Wait, its not like that. Its different from the others I promise.’

“I’m not trusting the word of some strange telepathic squirrel. You could be working for that Spawn for all I know. Leading me into a trap.”

‘You don’t believe that. But I can show you, it's one of my abilities. You can experience it for yourself, without taking my word for it. Here…’

“Wait, no…”

Something weighty came across the link between their minds and suddenly she was bombarded by a wave of images. They streamed past without meaning, but then Jessica from the other side began to filter and organize until Alice felt like she was floating in an empty void.

‘When I was Jessica the human, my boyfriend disappeared for over a year and a half. Just disappeared into thin air one day. I had accepted he was dead after so long… Then one day he suddenly returned, covered in blood. More than nine years ago now, right there in Harmony where we both lived at the time.’

“Hey, what is this? Let me out of here!”

Alice tried to move, she had no sensation in her body and couldn’t tell if it was doing anything. Jessica continued her narration, ignoring Alice’s words.

‘When he came back, he started having… Dreams. Dreams of a frozen world. Of Serenity. He thought he was alone, even found the place soothing. But I thought it was a delusion, a curse. Holding him back from healing from his trauma from when he went missing. So one night, I confronted it head on. The night after he proposed to me. I couldn’t let the delusion continue for the man I was going to marry. How I wished I had believed him.’

Alice stopped thrashing as the void suddenly exploded into color as she floated inside an unfamiliar bedroom. A man was cowering in the corner as a woman leapt at him from the doorway. The man desperately fought to get her off, but the woman clung on tight. Alice couldn’t stop watching as the woman’s silent words caused the man to relax and stop fighting. He looked so relieved as he checked the time. Then the two froze, and dissolved into gray mist.

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‘But then I was brought to Serenity alongside him, and the monster that had been lurking emerged. It had already started warping my fiance’s mind, but it only wanted me for food. If not for help I would have been consumed.’

Quick flashes as a black orb floated above the ground, the woman suspended above it as her clothes rippled strangely, slowly being lowered downward.

‘But my future friends were there, and I was saved.’

The image of a massive foot striking the black orb and the woman falling to the side. The woman standing with a horrifying creature with yellow plating looming over, her looking back and laughing at it happily. The woman throwing a ball, playing catch with the creature, the short tentacles on its face rippling as it tracked the ball with its multitudes of eyes. A familiar squirrel running between the woman’s legs and she playfully chased it, shaking her fist at it playfully.

The squirrel was now riding on the yellow plated creature’s shoulders.

The three of them walking together out onto the streets of a frozen town together.

Alice nearly screamed when the yellow creature suddenly grabbed the woman in the images and lifted her towards its mouth. But then the arms shifted to the side and the woman was slung over the creature’s shoulder and it turned and began to run off. Alice caught a glance of the woman’s face and it was not the terror or even surprise that she expected. It showed exasperation and embarrassed resignation. Complete trust that the creature wasn’t trying to hurt her even as she bounced up and down on its shoulder as it moved after having slung her over its shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

‘Robin. It named itself Robin after the bird had seen. I remember when I was Squirrel I would observe the other animals that had been brought to Serenity together with it. But I never saw a robin. I wonder if one came in the beginning? Maybe that uniqueness is why it chose the name.’

The scene shifted again. The woman was saying something, and the yellow creature looked away and seemed to full body pout, apparently not liking what it heard. But the woman walked away with the Squirrel and the creature, Robin, remained behind.

The image almost changed again, but stopped with the world in an inbetween state, everything half dissolved and distorted.

‘You don’t want to see the next part. All I’ll say is that I was heavily injured and Robin almost saved me in time.’

The world shifted again and Robin was running full speed down a street. A distorted and shifting feminine humanoid form slung over its shoulder. The shifting form was placed on the ground and nothing seemed to happen for a moment. The figure moved weakly, and the squirrel came up to it and looked it in the eyes. The figure thrashed one last time and went still before the scene dissolved again.

‘I - She died when I. Squirrel extracted the last of the memories to form me. Robin attempted to take revenge for her, on my killer. When I arrived, the killer was already gone. Only Robin and I were left behind as the world began to dissolve around us.’

Alice was suddenly floating in the air and watched as the walls of gray mists rushed inwards from every direction. Everything in their path was swallowed up. And Alice could see that even before the wall touched them, the houses and land began twisting and dissolving. She looked below as there was movement. Robin, his plates now red for some reason standing above a hole with a golden portal below. Squirrel was perched on its shoulder. It jumped in and the two of them disappeared.

‘We jumped through the portal… And were on earth again. An earth in chaos.’

Alice gasped as the world shifted yet again to Harmony. Windows were broken. Inhuman growls and screeches and gunfire sounded out in the distance. Entire buildings were reduced to rubble and many parts were even on fire. Robin and the squirrel emerged from a massive crater filled with rubble as the golden portal behind them snapped shut.

The scene fast forwarded suddenly, and Alice felt something in her gut lurch as the pair speed walked out of town and reached the dome. Robin put its hand on what Alice knew must be the dome, and after a moment created an opening with a bright flash of golden light. The two quickly moved out and stepped through to the outside world.

‘I had thought we were clear. Safe away from the fighting, that we could explain if given a chance. I thought I could do it because of my memories as a human. We just had to get clear of the main fighting so we wouldn’t be attacked immediately by the soldiers. But looking back, I was foolish. They always would have attacked Robin no matter how far away we made it.’

Suddenly they were surrounded by soldiers. A few of them launched heavy metal rods into Robin’s back with strange things looking like harpoon guns. Alice winced as Robin thrashed and screeched at what seemed like some kind of electric shock. It was rolled onto a cargo net and lifted into the air by a helicopter, shocked violently every time it tried to move. Alice could feel Jessica’s frustration and despair.

‘They captured Robin, took him away to be experimented on. Ignoring me because I was too familiar, too unassuming to be dangerous.’

The helicopter receded into the distance as Alice watched Jessica watching on helplessly from the top of one of the trees.

‘Ever since, I’ve been doing what I can to get him back. But it isn’t enough. Finally after all this time, I’ve found someone that can help me. Who I can help in turn. Who will understand… So Alice. Will you help me save my friend?’

The scene lingered on the receding helicopter for a few more seconds as the words hung in the air in Alice’s mind. Then the world dissolved one last time, and Alice sat up gasping from the bed. In reality again. Jessica sat at the end of the bed just as before, staring at her.

‘Please Alice. I have to save Robin, just as much as you want to save Julia. What does it matter what it was born as?’

Alice’s mind was reeling. Fuck, she had thought the thing with her mom had been a lot. “Give me time to think.”

‘But…’

“No, Jessica! You don’t get to just show me all that and expect me to just say yes. You didn’t even ask permission first before doing all of that. I need time to think! Let’s just talk about this tomorrow.”

Alice stood and flicked off the light and went back to bed and went under her covers. She lay there and stared at the wall trying to wrap her head over everything she had been shown...

‘I’m sorry. You’re right, I’ll let you think it all over. I shouldn’t have put so much on you all at once. We can talk tomorrow. Good night.’

Alice responded absentmindedly, “Good night, Jessica”

She barely even noticed when the squirrel's shadow left the end of the bed as Jessica jumped off. She was too wrapped up in her thoughts for that. When she eventually did fall to sleep, her dreams kept flashing to the images she had been shown. Trying to make sense of it all.